Chelsea made Manchester city to wait for premier league title after Aguero missed penalty and Alonso scored the winning goal
here was a time in his Premier League career when Sergio Aguero would rely mostly on the sheer power of his finishing when the title was at stake, but goals, wealth, fame and the passing of the years can do strange things to a man.
Perhaps Chelsea might still have come back to win this game if Aguero had buried his first-half penalty with the same ferocity that he once dispatched the winner against Queens Park Rangers on that famous day nine years ago, but this time, 258 goals into his City career, he felt like doing something different.
At an empty Etihad, with City one goal ahead and the third title of the Pep Guardiola era just a single win away, there was something of the great fading performer permitting himself to stray off script one last time.
Aguero’s attempt at an insouciant deception from the spot – otherwise known as the Panenka – turned into the easiest save that Chelsea goalkeeper Edouard Mendy made all day. After months of unyielding discipline in performance, this moment encapsulated City’s end-of-term frivolity better than any other. Even Guardiola, raging by the end over what he saw as a range of refereeing injustices, would have to admit there were others too.
City’s Champions League final opponentsat the end of the month survived that penalty and came back to win the game in the second half. First through an equaliser by Hakim Ziyech – who scored the Wembley winner when the two sides met in last month’s FA Cup semi-finals – and then an injury-time goal from Marcos Alonso. It will not change the destination of the title but it does give that Champions League final – wherever it might be played – a greater sense of jeopardy than might earlier have been expected.
By the time Guardiola’s side next play, on Friday against Newcastle United, when a win will seal the seventh league championship in City’s history, their rivals Manchester United in second place will have played three times. Starting with Aston Villa on Sunday and then on to the Old Trafford double header against Leicester City and Liverpool on Tuesday and Thursday, a single point dropped by United will mean that the title is all but decided.
In the hours before kick-off, the blue flare smoke was blowing in the streets around the Etihad Stadium as the crowds gathered to salute the champions of 2020/2021, and while that will undoubtedly come soon, this was one more twist in the tale of a season that has much in store for City and Chelsea.
Afterwards Guardiola complained about a penalty denied his side when the Chelsea substitute was judged not to have fouled Raheem Sterling and he might have had a point. Even so, City were lucky that their captain for the day survived a bad challenge on 12 minutes on Timo Werner that could so easily have been a red card.
Tuchel and Guardiola, who were managerial rivals in the Bundesliga, are evidently comfortable in one another’s company and were long in conversation pitchside before the game. The German also finds himself on a formidable roll that has seen his team rise to third in the table now and eagerly awaiting two Cup finals.
More crucially, they have found a way to beat City, albeit on this occasion a much-changed version from the side that Guardiola will surely pick in the last game of the season.
Just the nine changes for Guardiola from the side that overcame Paris Saint-Germain in mid-week, his trust in his self-renewing match-winning machine as strong as ever. It meant that there was no Kevin De Bruyne, Kyle Walker or Phil Foden among others – just Ederson and Ruben Dias retained.
Although by the end Guardiola had turned to Foden and Ilkay Gundogan as City went in search of the winner. Tuchel made six changes from the team that saw off Real Madrid. Yet there was something in the confidence with which Chelsea came back from a goal behind in the second half that makes this Champions League final harder to call.
Sterling is now in the second string as far as Guardiola is concerned and the Englishman was fortunate that Anthony Taylor and his Var, Stuart Attwell, did not take a dimmer view of an early wild challenge on Werner. They were satisfied with the award of a yellow card.
Among those rested by Tuchel were Mason Mount, Thiago Silva and Ben Chilwell and there was another start for Billy Gilmour, just the second for him in the league since the turn of the year. Gradually, Chelsea found their possession count eroded towards the end of the first half when the game at last got interesting. For all his involvement in Alonso’s late winner, Werner’s confidence is still fragile and his troubled relationship with the offside law continues.
That said, eventually it was the misjudgement of Andreas Christensen that got City in behind for their goal. He stumbled over when duelling with Gabriel Jesus on the left and the cross was swept in by Sterling after Aguero’s lousy first touch. It was the last involvement for the Danish defender who went off injured.
That was perhaps a warning of the glorious farce to come when the Argentine stepped up to take a barely deserved penalty in the third minute of time added on at the end of the first half. By now Tuchel was raging at the embattled Jonathan Moss in the fourth official’s role when Taylor decided that an innocuous collision between Gilmour and Jesus merited a penalty. The stage was set for City's greatest-ever goalscorer and he chose this moment to deploy the Panenka.
There was a notable tell in his movement as the swing of the right leg slowed down at the crucial moment. Great credit to Edouard Mendy who spotted it like a batsman reading the slow delivery. The Chelsea goalkeeper had already gone to his right but had more than enough time to steady himself on the turf with his right hand, stand up and catch the shot one-handed. Aguero seemed to suppress a smile. After all those goals maybe he felt he could spare himself one reckless moment of indulgence.
Guardiola looked desolate. He seemed to sense the impending doom after the hour when his midfielder Rodri checked back into trouble in the middle of the pitch. He was well caught out by Cesar Azpilicueta who drove forward and worked the ball between himself, Christian Pulisic and Ziyech before the latter was teed up for a fine shot that he stroked out of the reach of Ederson.
As Guardiola complained about Zouma’s challenge on Sterling so Chelsea attacked one more time and Werner crossed for Alonso to finish. On their day, Guardiola’s side are unquestionably capable of beating anyone but Tuchel’s side have shown that when it is not that kind of day, then this Chelsea team are ready to pounce.
FT: Man City 1 Chelsea 2
Chelsea with a really strong second half performance, but all the talk will be about that Aguero penalty miss.
Perhaps it shouldn't be, because that is a big result in its own right for Chelsea in the top four race. They jump above Leicester and six points clear of West Ham.
They have also won back-to-back meetings against City. I don't think we will see that City system in the Champions League final but what a boost!